Thirty-four years ago this weekend, the 82 surviving crew members of the Navy spy ship USS Pueblo shivered on their bunks in a North Korean prison. As they listened to screams of their shipmates enduring beatings and torture, they prayed for U.S. jets to scream in from the sky and begin the attack they were sure would come soon.

"I was flabbergasted there was no response," said Bob Chicca, then a Marine Corps sergeant who worked as a translator in the Pueblos secret communications hut. "It took months for me to get that no [military] reaction was going to come. I didnt like it one bit."

Thousands of pages of recently declassified documents  including minutes of meetings of President Johnsons inner circle, secret CIA memos, telegrams between the State Department and embassies in Seoul and Moscow and transcripts of the presidents recorded telephone conversations  show the White House starved for information about the ships capture in international waters near Wonson, North Korea, in 1968. They feared provoking a war with the Soviets or the Chinese.

Many of the documents are part of a collection published by State Department researchers in 1999 called "Foreign Relations of the United States" and later posted on the Departments Web site (www.state.gov). Most were labeled "Top Secret."

The State Department documents show that although Johnson considered military action, he and his advisors dismissed the idea of the kind of quick-strike rescue or aerial bombardment the crew hoped for. North Koreas aerial defenses were too strong and the risk of a war with the Communist powers too great, especially with the United States already bogged down in Vietnam.

"I am deeply sorry about the ship and the 83 men," said Clark Clifford, a Johnson aide who would become secretary of Defense five weeks later, "but I do not think it is worth a resumption of the Korean War."

North Korea had been increasingly bold in early 1968, harassing and firing at South Korean fishing boats. Just two days before Pueblos capture, they sent a team of 31 infiltrators into South Korea to assassinate that countrys president, but South Korea rounded them up and executed them.

U.S. leaders firmly believed the Soviets were using their client state to lure America into a second Asian war.

CIA Director Richard Helms said as much in a memo to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, written a few hours after the capture. He accused North Korea of "deliberately creating a pretext for hostilities."

Publicly the United States sought help from the United Nations while privately Defense officials drew up a list of military measures they could take, including mining Wonson harbor, launching air attacks against selected North Korean targets and seizing North Korean ships. Johnson aide Walt Rostow argued the hardest for military action. He noted that a Soviet surveillance ship similar to the Pueblo had been following the Enterprise in the Sea of Japan. He thought a "symmetrical response" would be to have the South Koreans surround and seize it.

"We do not want to appear weak to the American people by doing no more than beg in the United Nations," he said at a Jan. 24 meeting of Johnsons inner circle. The following day, he told the president the seizure called for an "equivalent reprisal." Clifford argued most strongly against such saber-rattling.

"I am concerned about using this incident as the basis for major military action," he said. "This is not a clear case. If we can find a way out with face, we should do so."

Johnson eventually chose largely symbolic military measures that also helped close the North Koreans 2-1 airpower advantage. He kept the Enterprise and its 68 aircraft in the Sea of Japan while bringing the USS Kitty Hawk over from Japan as a backup. He sent 59 jets to South Korea, and quietly moved 26 B-52s to Guam and Okinawa. Finally, he called up thousands of stateside reserves in case of hostilities on the Korean peninsula. It took 11 months of negotiations to free the men, and the crew long has wondered why the Navy didnt send help as soon as the ship reported trouble.

"The time for action was in the first four or five hours, and no one wanted to say go, " Chicca said in a telephone interview Friday. "By the time they even woke Johnson, it was already too late." The president, skewered in the press over the lack of military support for the Pueblo, asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff the same thing.

Gen. Earle Wheeler, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told Johnson the commander of the 5th Air Force in Japan did scramble aircraft but called them back when he realized they could not reach the area before dark. Military leaders also believed the North Koreans might blow the Americans out of the sky with their air defenses and the 70 MiG fighters parked at Wonson.

"We would have been in a fine fix if we had sent planes in there," Wheeler said at a meeting of the Joint Chiefs on Jan. 29. "We probably would have been in a war."

During the Korean war we sat on Guam, ready to go with minutes notice, with presents for either Russia or China, whichever or both. They both had been told that we would never allow our men to be pushed into the ocean, this they understood.

Johnson, Clifford and Macnamara were weak men in over their head, unlike Truman and Ike.

"I am deeply sorry about the ship and the 83 men," said Clark Clifford, a Johnson aide who would become secretary of Defense five weeks later, "but I do not think it is worth a resumption of the Korean War."

Nothing he said before "but" counts. The key phrase is "I do not think it is worth a resumption of the Korean War."

He was willing to see 83 American military tortured to death to avoid a war with North Korea. Imagine a world where a spineless leader allows orcs to torture 83 of his warriors without a response.

President Bush is naming names and this is not over, not by a long shot.

"Our grief has turned to anger and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done," Bush vowed to thunderous applause.

Johnson was unrealistically afraid of the Red Chinese, who were in such an internal froth at that time that they couldn't have done much anyway. That fear was reflected in both his policies in Vietnam, and those surrounding the Pueblo incident. That said, there was plenty of blame to go around. The Navy did not make sufficient arrangements to protect what was essentially an unarmed ship (They did have machine guns). They did learn however, and for the most part the mission of the Pueblo and her sisters was taken over by modified destroyers and frigates, which could at least stand up to a pipqueak navy like that of North Korea, at least long enough to call in the calvary.

LBJ was a typical demonicRat president. He was ballless and more concerned about his role in history than being a commander in chief. He refused to use decisive actions in Nam to punish N. Vietnamese communists. He and his pinky panty jagoffs placed suicide controls over our pilots who risked their lives with each op.

Personally, the Pueblo may have been set up so LBJ could activate the reserves, which many were called up after the action. Many of us got out of the reserves and service after we realized that LBJ did not want to win the war. Critical MOS's were in short supply. Post Pueblo, many reservists with these Critical MOS's were called up. Of course nothing was done to the vicious NKs, and the Pueblo is still there as their national treasure!

Presidents like Truman in the Korean War, LBJ, Carter and Clinton never protect the American Serviceman. Their pink panty jagoff lawyers work 24/7 to protect the evil ones and to put our guys in harms way. They tried this in our most recent war. Rumsfield ripped new rectums very quickly.

There should be a National Urinal at LBJ's grave for Nam veterans, widows of guys killed there, parents of guys killed there, and other relatives of guys killed there. Then 24/7 these people could visit the grave of this dishonorable demonicRat and leave their feelings about him on his grave! I would visit at least once a year and give LBJ what I think of him!

Let's see what party was in control of the presidency and congress during the Korean War and when the Pueble was captured?

I will be the first to condemn those repubies who have turned their back on POW's. It would be a breath of fresh air from you life long repubie haters to point your fingers at the real evil in politics. However, I will not hold my breath while waiting for that to happen?

Would you please answer my question at the start of this reply or is that beyond your ability to honestly answer it!

We both would go to jail if we really said what we know and feel about this!

Since, I'm going fishing, so no more comments from me. My reply #10 still stands. My BP probably went up 10 points by just reveiwing this thread! I'm sure that you have the same feelings on this terrible moment during LBJ's criminal era as President.

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